Bad Hair Day? Consider spending time in a group of attractive people.Observers may find you more attractive and likable when you’re in a group, and may more accurately judge your personality traits.

Edward Vul

University of California, San Diego’s Drew Walker and Edward Vul reported that volunteers rated target individuals as more attractive when they were observed in a group rather than alone.
Walker and Vul argue that the brain’s perceptual system “computes a statistical summary representation, or an ensemble,” and is biased toward perceiving the ensemble average as attractive.

Previous blog posts mentioned that individuals who are judged attractive have additional “unfair advantages”: The prevalent bias in attributing positive characteristics to them, including good health, good genes, intelligence, and success.

Cunningham’s group noted that women’s weight wasn’t as relevant to attractiveness as a waist-to-hips ratio of 7:10 and Body Mass Index (BMI) of 20.85, a finding that may surprise weight-conscious individuals.

In contrast, preferred characteristics for men were a large jaw and brow, prominent cheekbones, and broad chin, with a waist-to-hips ratio for men is 9:10 and about 12 percent body fat.
Smooth skin, shiny hair, and facial symmetry were rated as attractive for both women and men.

Genevieve Lorenzo

Physical attractiveness focuses observers’ attention on attractive individuals, and enable more accurate assessments of their personality traits based on brief interactions, according to University of British Columbia’s Genevieve Lorenzo and Jeremy Biesanz with Lauren Human of University of California, San Francisco.

Similarly, University of Toronto’s Nicholas Rule and Nalini Ambady, then of Tufts, reported that volunteer raters could accurately evaluate the competence, dominance, likeability, maturity and trustworthiness of CEOs by viewing photographs of the executives’ faces.

Nalini Ambady

In addition, thirty volunteers assessed CEOs’ “leadership success” based on appearance alone, and these rating were very significantly related to profitability of the organizations the CEOs led.

They noted that firms that achieved superior financial results tended to have male CEOs with wider faces (relative to facial height), particularly among organizations with “cognitively simple leadership teams.”

Margaret Ormiston

These results may be interpreted through the lens of evolutionary biology, suggesting that facial structure may be perceived by observers and followers as possessing trustworthy leadership skills, leading to attributions of competence, and igniting loyalty and motivation to follow.

-*What positive bias do you observe toward attractive individuals in the workplace?